Posts Tagged 'Game'

With apologies to Coolio, I couldn't resist adapting a line from the chorus of "Gangsta's Paradise" to be the title of this blog post. While I could come up with a full, cringe-worthy cloud computing version of the song (and perform it), I'll save myself the embarrassment and instead focus on why "Gamer's Paradise" came to mind in the first place. We announced some amazing stats about two gaming customers that use SoftLayer's cloud infrastructure to power popular online games, and I thought I'd share an interesting observation about that news.

More than 130 million gamers rely on SoftLayer infrastructure. SoftLayer is virtually invisible to those gamers. And that's why gaming companies love us.

When would a gamer care where a game is hosted? Simple: When gameplay is unavailable, lagging, or otherwise underperforming. Because we deliver peak cloud performance consistently for our gaming customers, we'll continue to live in the shadows of gamers' collective consciousness (while taking center stage in the minds of game producers and developers).

It's easy to get caught up in discussing the technical merits of our cloud hosting platform. Speeds and feeds provide great metrics for explaining our infrastructure, but every now and then, it's worthwhile to step back and look at the forest for the trees. Instead of talking about how bare metal resources consistently outperform their virtual server equivalents, let's take a look at why our gaming customers need as much server horsepower as we can provide:

As you can see, the games we're hosting for our customers are a little more resource-intensive than Tic-tac-toe and Pong. By leveraging SoftLayer bare metal infrastructure, gaming companies such as KUULUU and Multiplay can seamlessly support high definition gameplay in massive online environments for gamers around the world. When KUULUU launched their wildly popular LP Recharge Facebook game, they trusted our platform all the way from beta testing through launch, daily play, and updates. When Multiplay needed to support 25,000 new users in Battlefield 4, they spun up dedicated SoftLayer resources in less than four hours. If gamers expect a flawless user experience, you can imagine how attentive to infrastructure needs gaming companies are.

As more and more users sign on to play games online with Multiplay, KUULUU, and other gaming customers on our platform, we'll celebrate crossing even bigger (and more astounding) milestones like the 130 million mark we're sharing today. In the meantime, I'm going to go "check on our customers' servers" with a few hours of gameplay ... You know, for the good of our customers.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority says, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," but we absconded from Caesars Palace with far too many pictures and videos from Parallels Summit to adhere to their suggestion. Over the course of three days, attendees stayed busy with presentations, networking sessions, parties, cocktails and (of course) the Server Challenge II. And thanks to Alan's astute questions in The Hangover, we didn't have to ask if the hotel was pager-friendly, whether a payphone bank was available or if Caesar actually lived at the hotel ... We could focus on the business at hand.

This year, Parallels structured the conference around three distinct tracks — Business, Technical and Developer — to focus all of the presentations for their most relevant audiences, and as a result, Parallels Summit engaged a broader, more diverse crowd than ever before. Many of the presentations were specifically geared toward the future of the cloud and how businesses can innovate to leverage the cloud's potential. With all of that buzz around the cloud and innovation, SoftLayer felt right at home. We were also right at home when it came to partying.

SoftLayer was a proud sponsor of the massive Parallels Summit party at PURE Nightclub in Caesar's palace on the second night of the conference. With respect to the "What Happens in Vegas" tagline, we actually powered down our recording devices to let the crowd enjoy the jugglers, acrobats, drinks and music without fear of incriminating pictures winding up on Facebook. Don't worry, though ... We made up for that radio silence by getting a little extra coverage of the epic Server Challenge II competition.

More than one hundred attendees stepped up to reassemble our rack of Supermicro servers, and the competition was fierce. The top two times were fifty-nine hundredths of a second apart from each other, and it took a blazingly fast time of 1:25.00 to even make the leader board. As the challenge heated up, we were able to capture video of the top three competitors (to be used as study materials for all competitors at future events):

It's pretty amazing to see the cult following that the Server Challenge is starting to form, but it's not very surprising. Given how intense some of these contests have been, people are scouting our events page for their next opportunity to step up to the server rack, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that people are mocking up their own Server Challenge racks at home to hone their strategy. A few of our friends on Twitter hinted that they're in training to dominate the next time they compete, so we're preparing for the crowds to get bigger and for the times to keep dropping.

If you weren't able to attend the show, Parallels posted video from two of the keynote presentations, and shared several of the presentation slide decks on the Parallels Summit Agenda. You might not get the full experience of networking, partying or competing in the Server Challenge, but you can still learn a lot.

Wakka wakka wakka wakka. All your base are belong to us. I'm sorry Mario, but our princess is in another castle. It's dangerous to go alone. Do a barrel roll.

If you can place any of those quotes from the video games of yore, you'll probably love the Server Challenge II. Taking cues from classic arcade games, we've teamed up with Supermicro to build a worthy sequel to our original Server Challenge:

If you come across Server Challenge II at a conference, your task is clear. You step up to the full-sized server rack and perform three simple tasks:

Load the data.

Connect the network.

Save the world.

You've got two attempts per day to install twenty-four drive trays into two 2U Supermicro servers and plug eighteen network cables into their correct switches. Get all of that done in the fastest time at the conference, and you walk away with a brand new Macbook Air. During booth setup at GDC Online, we shot a quick video of what that looks like:

The new challenge is sure to garner a lot of attention, and we're excited to see the competition heat up as the show progresses. Beyond being a fun game, the Server Challenge II is also a great visual for what SoftLayer does. When you get to touch servers in a server hosting company's booth, you're probably going to remember us the next time you need to order a new server. You also get to see the Cisco and Supermicro switches that you'd see in all of our thirteen data centers around the world ... It's a tech geek's dream come true.

In honor of the launch of Server Challenge II, we're going to offer some "live" coverage of the competition at GDC Online this week. If you want to watch the Server Challenge II GDC Online 2012 remotely via "challenge-cast," bookmark this blog post and refresh frequently. We'll update the leader board every hour or two so that you can keep track of how the times are progressing throughout the show:

Game on.

**UPDATE** GDC Online has officially wrapped, and after some last-minute heroics, Derek Manns grabbed the top spot (and the MacBook Air) for his Server Challenge II efforts! If you've been watching the leader board throughout the conference, you saw the top attendee time fall from 1:59.30 all the way down to 1:09.48. We hope you've enjoyed the "challenge-cast" ... Keep an eye on SoftLayer's event schedule to prepare for your next chance to take on the Server Challenge II.

At the beginning of the baseball season, we gave away tickets for a lucky customer to see a Texas Rangers game, and as a result of that generosity, the Rangers thought it fitting to make it to the World Series. Well ... our little giveaway may not have had anything to do with their success, but we like to think our support helped a little.

Understanding that we have customers and employees who are die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fans, I don't want to turn anyone off with this blog post, but with all of the buzz in the air about the World Series coming back to Arlington this year, I started thinking about the Top 10 Ways SoftLayer is Like the Texas Rangers:

Both have Louisville Slugger bats ... The Rangers' bats do great things, while SoftLayer's bats are given to recognize employees that have done great things.

Support is awesome from the customers (fans) to the back office to the team on the field making plays.

Champions of the World, baby!!**

* Apologies to Michael Young, as this statement may not be true as applied to him. Each of my blogs to date has a veiled (or obvious) reference to our CFO, and it was very difficult to think of how to incorporate this reference in a blog dealing with the Texas Rangers, so I may have taken undue liberties for which I apologize.

** The aspirations associated with that last comparison may have strayed me from an unbiased comparison. :-)